- Draft legislation unveiled Monday would establish a regulatory framework for most digital assets.
- The so-called market structure bill follows a failed attempt to pass similar legislation in the last Congress.
Four House Republicans introduced a draft bill on Monday that would establish a regulatory framework for digital assets in the US.
If passed, crypto assets certified as fully “decentralised” would be classified as commodities and fall under the umbrella of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. Assets deemed centralised would be regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
“Overall, this bill again would make the CFTC the dominant crypto regulator, but still gives the SEC jurisdiction until a network establishes decentralization,” Justin Slaughter, vice president of regulatory affairs at crypto venture capital firm Paradigm, wrote on X.
Representatives French Hill of Arkansas, G.T. Thompson of Pennsylvania, Bryan Steil of Wisconsin and Dusty Johnson of South Dakota co-authored the discussion draft. Discussion drafts of bills are meant for public comment and have not yet been introduced into the legislative process.
“By providing strong safeguards and long-overdue regulatory certainty, the discussion draft advances President Trump’s vision to make the U.S. the ‘crypto capital of the world’ and reinforces America’s leadership in the global financial system,” Hill and Thompson said in a statement.
The draft bill is an “incremental, albeit meaningful” rewrite of FIT21, a market structure bill that passed the House of Representatives last year, according to Slaughter.
The Financial Innovation and Technology for the 21st Century Act, or FIT21, was meant to end the “food fight for control” of crypto regulation fought between the SEC and the CFTC, according to one of the bill’s sponsors. It passed the House with significant bipartisan support last year, but never received a vote in the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Monday’s 212-page discussion draft also seeks to establish disclosure requirements for digital asset developers, a right to self-custody crypto, new consumer protections, and state-level rulemaking for digital assets.
The House Agriculture and Financial Services committees are scheduled to hold a joint hearing on market structure legislation on Tuesday.
The bill joins two other pieces of crypto legislation currently working their way through Congress: the Genius Act and the Stable Act, both of which would regulate the issuance of dollar-pegged stablecoins.
The Senate’s Genius Act suffered a setback over the weekend after nine Democratic lawmakers withdrew their support, saying that “the bill as it currently stands still has numerous issues that must be addressed.”
Andrew Flanagan is a markets correspondent for DL News. Have a tip? Reach out to aflanagan@dlnews.com.
